Project Planner - Louise Hobson

Louise Hobson,
Age 30

BSc Hons Construction Management

What encouraged you to join the construction industry?
At the age when I was choosing my options at school I was very lucky in that I happened to be good at a lot of subjects, but I particularly enjoyed the more practical subjects like Science, Maths and CDT and those were the things I wanted to carry forward from school.

I was also interested in doing something that wasn't traditional seen as a female role; I wasn't interested in Nursing or any of that.

My mum had wanted a new house at the time as well so I went around a lot of new build show homes with her, where the construction site was still being worked on and I thought I'd like to do something like this.

What were you doing before?
I took my GCSE's, A Level's and then went on to do a degree. I took my degree in Construction Management and at the time wanted to go on to be a Project Manager, as that's where all the glory is!? But the course gave you a lot of technical knowledge along with a management qualification that you could apply to almost any industry.

It was a four year course with a years work placement, I had my year out with Mowlem working for on a contract for a housing association client co-ordinating routine and reactive maintenance repairs. I absolutely loved it! I was in charge of looking after the tradesmen, planning who was going to do what and when, also making sure they had the equipment and parts to carry out the job.

We had to deal with a lot of social issues in this job from the elderly that needed prioritising to boarding up houses once tenants had been evicted, we also had to go into make repairs to properties that had been used by drug addicts - they were in very bad condition, but it felt socially worth while.

What do you do day-to-day?
At the moment I'm in the office rather than being on site, the project that I am currently involved in is in the negotiation stages. It's a very big job to produce 18 new schools, so you can imagine how many people will be working on it. When the project gets on-site though I will be concentrate on the building of one school.

Right now we're at the planning stage, writing description of the work that we will carry out for the client to agree, forecasting budgets, drawing plans, ordering materials and scheduling work.

Once we get out on site my role will be to monitor and record progress to report back to the client. If we're behind schedule then we have to reassess and re-plan work, deciding how we're going to deal with that and if there's anything that we can do to get us back on track.

Good bits and bad bits about your job?
I work with really great people and you get to work with a lot of different people on a lot of different projects - so it never gets stale. I've worked on apartments, police stations, supermarkets, health care centres and schools - so it's give me a huge scope of experience and the aspects involved in those different projects ensure that you are exposed to all of the different construction trades. Also it's what i've always wanted to do, i've blossomed in it, because i'm good at what i do and i'm good at what i do because i enjoy it - if that makes sense!?

The bad bits are the early mornings on cold building site, when you can wonder what am I doing here!? The other thing that has been more of a frustration is that it's taken me longer to move up the career ladder than I had hoped, it's because of the skills shortage - they often offer more money to newer recruits and over look those already working for them.

Where would you like to take your career in the future?
To be a project planner on a large job, say £50 million. Perhaps to move into management, as some stage, to prove that I can do it. To be involved with training other planners so that they can be a worthwhile member of the team.